The Value of a Human Life: $129,000
Written on October 1, 2008 by Tezza
We all want to hold on to the age old notion that life is precious and that you can’t put a price on a human life but clearly that isn’t always the case. While first world countries live in obscene excess wasting countless tonnes of food daily, people less privileged are dying from hunger everyday. In fact according to the UN some 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs. So how do you put a value on a single human life, is one person’s life more valuable than another?
According to a Time article, health insurance companies around the world do just that. They put a value on human life and put simply, “insurance companies calculate that to make a treatment worth its cost, it must guarantee one year of “quality life” for $50,000 or less. New research, however, would argue that that figure is far too low.”
“Stanford economists have demonstrated that the average value of a year of quality human life is actually closer to about $129,000. To get to that number, Stefanos Zenios and his colleagues at Stanford Graduate School of Business used kidney dialysis as a benchmark. Every year dialysis saves the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who would otherwise die of renal failure while waiting for an organ transplant.”
“Assigning a dollar figure to Medicare patients’ lives may sound crass, but such valuations are routine in Americans’ daily lives. Take, for example, the $500,000 death benefit the government pays families when a soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Or the cost calculations that for-profit health insurers make to determine how much coverage they’ll give customers.”
So who comes up with these cost benefit calculations? Is it even right that we can have faceless multinational institutions putting arbitary values on a human life?
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I could put less of a number on some people…haha jk!
Assigning values in this way is a bit hard to accept for some individuals, but it appears that the current trend will lead to almost any element of day-to-day activity being expressed in terms of monetary value.
Humans cannot be expressed by money however, as the way the world is going now, people will have a monetary value and will be expressed so.
Insurance rates bids for human life value
@Trevor – LOL I kinda agrree with you. But placing a value on humans will devalue the prive.
Great post,lets not forget that monetary value does increase and decrease the economical values.
Funny while working as an EMT at a NASCAR race one weekend. I arrived on scene of a man who’d had a heart attack bystanders were performing CPR, he was by all accounts dead. My partner and I defibrillated him shocked his heart to get it going again. Loaded him in the ambulance for transport. His heart stopped enroute, we shocked him again and got him to the hospital. Total time from our arrival on scene to turning him over to the doctors in the hospital including stops to shock was 40 minutes. So if we factor his life by the amount that I got paid to save it we come to a grand total of (drum-roll please) $8. Really sad when you factor that some of the NASCAR drivers he was there to see made millions that day.
Interesting, while reading this passage “In fact according to the UN some 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs. So how do you put a value on a single human life, is one person’s life more valuable than another?”
The answer is NO
It’s jaw dropping that insurance companies even put a price tag on a human life.
Hi KC, Thanks for sharing such an eye opening experience. It highlights the inequality that exists. I think until there is mass consciousness in recognising that this inequality is no longer self serving for all then it will continue to exist in all its varied forms.
While this may be hard for some people to accept, there have to be benchmark figures for insurance companies to go off of. This number represents a financial equivalent, not an intrinsic one.
I can see the difference in value between guilty murderers and innocent life… but why is there an age difference? The killing of a child is indeed among the most tragic of events, but when an innocent adult is killed, it rarely makes anyone bat an eye.
It’s just sad looking at these statistics. When society rules depress me, I always remember “dead is the end for all” and no matter how sad a situation could be, there is always a solution, except for dead. People have forgotten the truth about life, and it’s not money. One day I read a proverb which always cheer me up. “Those who know what are waiting for, are waiting to be dead, but while they are waiting, they surround of beauty and strength their lives”
I thing you are right we can’t judge any amount for the human life. I have read your second post and i thing so that in your every post will find a unique topic of debate.
Interesting article! The whole idea behind cost-benefit analysis is also presented in Joel Bakan’s book, “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power” and really deals with putting a price on a human life. Definitely read that book when you get the chance. I also didn’t know about the $500,000 death benefit paid by the government.
I remember when I was a kid they said that a human was made up out of 98 cents worth of chemicals. On the other hand if you were to value each of the component parts of a human it probably adds up to a LOT more.
What is a heart, kidney or lung worth in a transplant. What is the value of a pint of blood or skin for skin grafts. All of these items have a price and they sure add up to more than $129,000
Just founf a very great thought from this post and one can not make any guage about the value of a humanlife as its so precious and invaluable. But as it comes to the insurance one can say its just a figure for financial equivalent.
The most stark difference you will see in this case, is that nobody will come to the defense of Pouillon’s murderer.Considering the outpouring of support on PJM for the killer of Dr. Tiller, this difference is more than sufficient to make clear the contrast in perspectives at play here.
I think the value of human life is unvalue, if I may say so! In ethic and gumanity sens…
The prophets last sermon instructed Muslims not to make such a distinction among people…but obviously that has long since been forgotten.
wow, that is pretty morbid to think about. But a very interesting article.
When society guidelines depress me, I constantly recall “dead is the end for all” and no matter how sad a scenario may be, there is certainly constantly a alternative, except for dead. Persons have forgotten the truth about life, and it is not dollars. 1 day I go through a proverb which always cheer me up. “Those who know what are waiting for, are waiting around being dead, but whilst they are waiting, they surround of beauty and strength their lives”
Exciting, though reading this passage “In truth according towards UN some 18,000 young children die every single day mainly because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million men and women go to bed each and every night with empty stomachs. So how do you set a worth over a single human life, is 1 person’s existence more valuable than yet another?”
It really is absurd to put a value such as that on a human life, I would never put one like that if I was working at an insurance company, I’d likely change the way Insurance was handled.
Till then,
Jean
Hi i think that is reallty very useful and also very impressive all is share again by again all lovely sharing looking very fantastic *hugs*
This was not an argument for or against socialized medicine. A similar argument can be made about private insurance. There is a point where people cost their insurance companies enough that they will cancel the coverage, and then new coverage becomes difficult and very expensive to get, if there are pre-existing conditions.
Is this the average cost of a human life? What about the people who are worth more then that like the celebrities?
This whole adminstration is not about our “inalienable rights” it is about imposing their views of social living on everyone else. Obama and company are very dangerous people and need to be stopped. They have no business in running this great country of ours.
It’s hard to put a value on a human life. Everyone has limitless potential and to put one person’s life at a higher value than the other can’t be right. Maybe in the case of presidents or other such ‘important’ people, such a thing might exist, or how servicemen, including soldiers and doctors were important during WW2 is another example that could be drawn as whole nation was counting on those people to protect them.
That Very Amazing … What is My Cost .. I want to calculate , I am 23 Year Old Blogger from UK